All posts filed under: recipe

Farmer’s Market Breakfast with Poached Eggs

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I have a confession to make.  Until today, I have never successfully poached an egg. It’s crazy, I know!  I mean, egg-poaching is a very basic cooking skill and I feel so ashamed that until now, it has completely flummoxed me.  About a year or so ago, I was bound and determined to learn the proper technique, only to end up with a pot of what looked like egg-drop soup.  I tried again and again; and again and again, I failed. I was told my eggs were too fresh. Then I was told that maybe they weren’t fresh enough! And then, this week I happened upon a little article in Real Simple Magazine about the many uses of a meat thermometer that just happened to mention that the ideal temperature for poaching eggs was 180 degrees fahrenheit!  Eureka! That was the variable I never considered in my earlier attempts.  I knew that the water should be barely simmering, but I never thought to check the temperature.  Well, that’s what I did, and SUCCESS!  Beautiful, silky, …

The Year I Learn to Bake: Ina Garten’s Baked Chocolate Pudding

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My stand mixer has been sitting on the countertop, patiently waiting for me to remember my New Year’s resolution to learn how to bake.  I’ll bet you thought I’d forgotten about it, too!  More likely, I’ll bet you thought it would be so much more fulfilling to resolve to be more organized or eat fewer calories…or perhaps even exercise more?  And not that there’s anything wrong with being virtuous, but aren’t most resolutions broken by the middle of February anyway? So, this was my way of setting myself up for success.   This is how you WIN at resolution-making:  make resolutions that you actually don’t mind keeping long-term! Being that it’s Valentine’s Day and I’m not adept at this whole baking thing yet, I decided to try something easy; something fairly fool-proof that didn’t contain anything terribly exotic and could be whipped up in mere minutes.  This recipe for Baked Chocolate Pudding fit the bill perfectly! I found it in Ina Garten’s “Back to Basics” cookbook and true to Ina’s form, there were only seven …